InternetCitizen2What less popular text editors do you like or should have a shout out more often? What stuff do you do with it?
pimeysHelix. A perfect programmer’s editor you can use with almost no config.
𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍Dammit, you beat me to it.
It’s such a great editor.
I’ve never heard of it, but I like the sound of the name :)
teawrecksInteresting. Have you spent any time with neovim? If so, I’m curious how they compare. I was just starting to investigate the nvim ecosystem, but it’s quite daunting. Still, I like the idea of everything being open source, and using plugins to augment my workflow.
Helix was inspired by neovim. Though mostly the inbuilt LSP/tree sitter support. Its keybindings are a mix between what neovim has and kakoune, though closer to kakoune I think. The major advantage IMO that helix has over neovim is built in support for most things you need plugins for in neovim as well as sane defaults out the box. You don’t need 10s of plugins and 100s of lines of config to get helix to work like a modern editor - it just does out the box. All you need to do is install the LSP server for the languages you are interested in and launch helix.
The major downside ATM is it has no plugin support at all. Which is not as bad as it sounds as it includes so much out the box that you would typically require plugins for in neovim. They are working on plugin support though so it is only a matter of time for this to be fixed. Currently I don’t feel the need for any plugins when using it so IMO it is not a deal breaker for me or my workflow. But the need to manage large configs and sets of plugins had already become too cumbersome in neovim for my liking.
Nate CoxI thought lack of plugins was going to be a deal breaker and now I’m kind of on the “do we really need plugins at all” side.
Helix out of the box is really nice.
There are already good answers to this, so I just add that yes, I’ve used vim/neovim for about 20 years before starting to use helix. I’m very familiar with the editor.
I used vi and then neovim for about 20 years (like the other @pimeys). I switched to kakoune first because nvim’s plugins were a mess and the LSP integration was unreliable. With all the plugins needed to get a decent dev editor, startup was starting to get slow. Kakoune had multi-select. But mainly, I switched because one necessary plugin (I think it was the LSP one) insisted on starting a nodejs server. Plugins were written in whatever, and running nvim meant spawning Ruby, Python, NodeJS, and whatever else processes; I switched because the nvim ecosystem was getting as bloated as EMACS.
I bounced from Kakoune to Helix after a couple of years, because Kakoune relies heavily on chording, and modality (pressing a key to get into a mode to do something or some things) is superficial; Helix makes much greater use of modes, often nested, and feels much more faithful to the vi philosophy to me. Also, Tree-Sitter is a disruptive technology.
Why is Tree-Sitter a disruptive technology?
Because, while many people are unaware of it or have beard of it but don’t know what it does, it’s a novel, well-executed, reusable solution that is incredible at what it does. Ot’s disruptive in the sense that I believe it’s changing how programs that need to parse code are written, and they’ll become faster to write, faster to execute, and better for it.
Not big-D disruptive, as in changing the face of computer science, but little-D, as in having a quiet but disproportionate impact on a lot of software.
Oh, I thought disruptive is a negative adjective. Translator translates it to my language as a negative adjective.
Your translator is right! The word does have negative connotations, in that the status quo is being disrupted. In the context of technology, it loses that connotation. It can mean something good, but not necessarily. Google was disruptive; was it for better, or worse? Tesla was too, but in the end, probably for the better. I’d argue that e-bikes are disruptive in the US, as they’re getting huge numbers of Americans who otherwise wouldn’t out of their cars for small trips.
So it’s basically something with big impact?
That’s reasonably synonymous.
Thanks for explanation!
Dreway, I was going to say that. Use it on all my boxes as a vi replacement.
I agree. I think the fact that it’s built around multi cursor edition and a selection -> action paradigm as opposed to vim’s action -> selection is going to become the norm slowly and surely.
christosI like xed for coding. Simple, costumisable enough, great experience.
I use it too, since I’m on Linux Mint. But only for simple stuff. I dont use it for anything more involved than simple bash scripts. Xed is nice, just wish it as a little more powerful
- vis vim/nvim was bloated 4 my use case, but ví wasn’t enough.
I especially like the nice and simple Lua API, multiple selections and structural regex.
For anyone in need of a more featureful but still hackable editor can extend the minimal editor with existing LUA plugins for extra functionality (LSP, spellchecking, plugin management, …).
Micro - not quite as fancy as Helix but it’s a static binary, bells and whistles included and ready to go without config. If you’re still using nano/pico, micro is a nice step up in functionality without the complexity of vim et al.
Multiple cursors, splits and tabs, mouse support, syntax highlighting, keyboard shortcuts that are more noob-friendly / familiar, it’s great.
caseyweedermanI don’t know why Micro hasn’t completely replaced Nano in the Linux world.
Wait, yes I do.
Despite believing it to be better in every way, my dumb fingers keep automatically reaching for the Nano keyboard shortcuts.
You know what the key combo is to copy a selection of text in Micro?
Ctrl C, why would it ever be anything else?
You know what the key combo is to copy a selection of text in Nano?
Fucking shift, alt, 6.
6!!
And then Ctrl U to paste. I hate that I’m used to that.
Never heard of that key combo in nano before, I’ve always used ctrl-K (which actually cuts, then I have to paste it back again if I want to leave that text in place).
[Edit] Looks like you only need to hit alt-6, not shift-alt-6, to copy a full line or whatever text has been highlighted.
Huh, I wonder where I got the shift from. Still kinda bonkers though.
It’s because of what ctrl+c does in most terminals
Vim users:
y
jelloeater85Hell yeah, Micro master race. It gives me VSCode feels on the CLI. It’s great ❤️
the_lone_wolfOnly thing missing is code block folding and unfolding functionality
notepad.exe
- Helix for terminal editing because I never got on well with the order you had to do thing in Vim, Helix (and Kakoune) make more sense to me.
- Lite-XL for a lightweight GUI editor. I just think its neat.
- Pulsar for everything else (mainly because I’m involved with it, come visit us on Lemmy at [email protected] /shill).
Pulsar - Lemmy
# Pulsar The community led, hyper-hackable text editor - 🌐 Website - pulsar-edit.dev [https://pulsar-edit.dev/] - 🖥️ GitHub - pulsar-edit [https://github.com/pulsar-edit/] - 🎁 Sponsor Pulsar development [https://pulsar-edit.dev/donate.html] ## Rules By posting here you also agree to adhere to our Code of Conduct [https://github.com/pulsar-edit/.github/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md] by: - Using welcoming and inclusive language - Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences - Gracefully accepting constructive criticism - Focusing on what is best for the community - Showing empathy towards other community members - Considering all suggestions regardless of personal opinions ## Useful Links - pulsar-edit.dev [https://pulsar-edit.dev] - Pulsar Package Repository [https://web.pulsar-edit.dev/] - GitHub org [https://github.com/pulsar-edit] - Pulsar repository [https://github.com/pulsar-edit/pulsar] - Pulsar Blog [https://pulsar-edit.dev/blog/] - Discord [https://discord.gg/7aEbB9dGRT] - Mastodon [https://fosstodon.org/@pulsaredit] - Forum [https://github.com/orgs/pulsar-edit/discussions]
As someone who studied radio astronomy, thanks for telling me about Pulsar.
I’ve been wanting to get more and more thematic with naming things but my efforts haven’t come to fruit just yet. Like we have “regular” and “rolling” releases but those are boring (although descriptive), I was proprosing something like Nebula and Quasar, you know, something that ties in with the space name.
Pulsar looked really nice until I realised it’s just a other electron app. But will probably give lite-xl a try
neo (he/him)pretty sure pulsar is a fork of atom, one of the og electron packages
It is indeed, we picked up where Atom left off. And yeah, not just “one of” but the og electron app.
It absolutely isn’t “another electron app” in that sense. Atom (and now Pulsar) literally invented Electron, it is the original Electron app to the point where even thinking about de-coupling it isn’t really possible. Electron literally used to be called “Atom-shell”.
Woah! Atom-shell = electron. I’m dumb and the connection was just made.
neovim
My favorite editor! Also incredibly popular…
GrappleHatNeovim!
Before I got around to learning vi, I spent a few years using joe, which seems to have fallen out of active development (the last release was in 2018). It’s a terminal-based editor that bears some resemblance to old DOS editors.
JaymesRSI love Joe. And even though its last update was a while ago, it’s still my preferred editor.
I use joe regularly for in-terminal editing. It’s easy, lightweight and very helpful, unlike vi…
I’d argue that vi/vim is fairly light depending on how you’re using it. I don’t use any plug-ins and I much prefer it over GUI programs other than in exceptional circumstances
Ed Is The Standard Text Editor
I’m not saying it doesn’t get a lot of shout outs, but it could always do with one more. I think the last time I used it was to automate the editing of config files on some antiquated telephony system by piping ed commands through netcat.
Using Ed on an old Unix system feels like talking about the WW2 with a veteran in a home except we both have shellshock.
Ed Is The Standard Text Editor
ed, ex, and vi are all standard text editors in the Single Unix Specification.
FizzLinux people seem to be obsessed with text editors. If I’m on windows I use notepad and on linux I use Kate or whatever the default is. What am I missing out on by not trying out different editors?
insomniacNothing really. Kate does a lot of stuff. If you’re not a software developer, it doesn’t really matter. Different text editors have differing levels of support for various programming languages and some people like all the key bindings so they don’t have to take their hands off the mouse.
But if you’re just editing plain text and you’re not a keyboard only kind of user, it doesn’t really matter.
Different workflows and plug ins.
Yeah, I use Kate for everything from quick notes to coding. Or nano. They are simple 🤷
Nothing, it’s mostly just weird people being obsessed with not using anything with a gui.
PlutoniumAcidNotepad is reeeally barebones, and that can be a good thing.
Check out Notepad++ if you ever need to work with text data more than just skimming a README file. You will see what these people mean.
I never understood why people liked Notepad++ so much. I always just used Notepad for simple text file editing and quick notes.
But I recently switched to POP!_OS and the text editor has lots of features Notepad doesn’t have (such as line numbers, indentation, and I can select the (programming) language I am writing the document in) and I found myself really liking these features.
Np++ has tabs, plus it autosaves so it can pull out old unsaved text upon reopening. Plus, it has syntaxes highlighting based on the selected coding language. And all the plug-ins for extra functionality.
Notepad is simple no frills for basic text, but np++ is great for coding (it can sometimes be even better than IDLE for Python coding).
Yeah, I now realise it could be very useful! I think Notepad in Windows 11 has tabs now but it’s still super barebones.
It’s worth noting that you can install Kate on Windows too if you want to apps.microsoft.com/detail/9NWMW7BB59HW
What am I missing out on by not trying out different editors?
Linux and Unix systems have historically always been designed to be easily configured and controlled with human-readable text files. Most apps you use on Linux can be scripted. So the better you get at using every-day Linux/Unix apps, the more you might want to tweak them to make it easier for you to use. To do this, you need to learn a little bit about how to write configuration files, and how to write simple scripts. This also helps you to automate things on your computer more easily, since all applications can talk to all other applications using a human-readable programming language. For managing all of this, a good editor is extremely helpful.
When you take things to the extreme, you can start using Emacs, which contains an entire Lisp programming environment for manipulating text. You can replace all of your configuration and scripts with a single programming language (Emacs Lisp). And Emacs can replace almost every single app on your computer where text is involved, from simple scripting and configuration all the way up to web browsing, chat, and email.